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Holy Writ and Holy Church
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2024
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For several years now one of the most frequently discussed topics in the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches has been the problem of Tradition. The kernel of this problem consists in the relations between Scripture and Tradition and between Scripture and the Church. Several important studies have been published on this theme, and it is undeniable that continental Protestantism has become sympathetic to some notion of tradition. At the same time it must be admitted that Protestant theologians today are no more able than was even so conciliating a figure as Melanchthon at the period of the Reformation to get over the notion of a separation between Scripture and Church, a separation which inevitably leads to the subordination of a purely human Church to a tradition regarded as divine, external and superior to this Church.
However, there have been some excellent studies in this field from the Catholic side which have helped to clear the ground of certain false problems and inadequate notions. Professor J. R. Geiselmann and E. Ortigues have put us all in their debt by their efforts to lay bare the precise meaning of the Tridentine decrees. The Acta of the Council of Trent remain indeed a useful and fascinating quarry for the theologian of today. It is, for example, of the greatest importance for the advance both of Catholic theology itself and of the ecumenical dialogue to learn that the Fathers of the Council deliberately omitted a proposed text according to which Revelation was to be found partly in Scripture and partly in unwritten apostolic traditions.
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- Copyright © 1960 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 E. Ortigues: ‘Ecritures et Traditions apostoliques au Concile de Trente’, in Recherches de Science religieuse, 36 (1949), pp. 271–99; J.R. Geiselmann: ‘Das Konzil von Trient über das Verhältnis der Heiligen Schrift und der nicht geschriebenen Traditionen’, in Die müundliche Ueberlieferung …, hrsg. v.M. Schmaus. Munich, 1957, pp. 123–206.
2 An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. 1878 edition, ch. 4, n. 4.
3 Denziger, 783. A most important text to be read very closely, pen in hand.
4 G.H. Tavard. A.A.: Holy Writ or HOly Church. The Crisis of the Protestant Reformation (Burns and Oates, 30s.).
5 I am not entirely happy with the explanation which Father Travard gives of the phrase ‘pari pietatis affectu’ as it appears in the Acta of the Council of trent. According to him it signifies there pietas fidei, fides (p. 207). But pietas, even in the expression pietas fidei, is a very broad and polyvalent term. The expression found its way here from a text of St Basil which had been appealed to several times in the course of the Council, De Spiritu Sancto, xxvii, 66, where the meaning is that Tradition and Scripture have the same force for salvation.
6 It is one I myself had already set out in Vraie et fausse réforme dans l'Eglise, Paris, 1950, p. 483.
7 The exposition, in good scholarly fashion, keeps close to the available texts. It would, howerver, have been an advantage to have the original given in footnotes, at least whenever the actual words used were of particular interest. It seems a pity, too, that Father Tavard, with one or two exceptions, never refers to studies and monographs: an adequate bibliography of the subject‐matter is lacking.
TWo slight imprecisions might also be noted here: p. 17, n. 4‐the Enarr. in Cant. of P.L., 162, is not by Anselm of Laon, but by an anonymous author of the beginning of the thirteenth century; p. 117‐Jacques Almain was not a Dominican.
8 Father Tavard's résumé of the Fathers' position on this point does not seem to me entirely satisfactory, especially as regards the earliest among them. He appears to attribute to them a postion approximating to that of certain Catholic apologists of the sixteenth century, according to whom it is the Church which discerns which books are inspired. But the ancient Fathers held the Canon to be an apostolic tradition which the Church had only to guard and transmit. This discernment by the Church is conceived as taking place through her allowing certain books to be read in the liturgy; and Father Tavard tends to identify here public reading in the assembly with liturgical reading. But it should be noted: (1) Those books were read in the liturgy which were held to be canonical (in accordance with an apostolic tradition), and not vice versa; (2) One must distinguish between liturgical reading and simple public reading: cf. J. Ruwet, ‘Lecture liturgique et Livres saints du N.T.’, in Biblica, 21 (1940), pp. 378–405.
9 For the second expression, see J. de Ghellinck, “Pagina” et “Sacra Pagina”. Histoire dun mot et transformation de l'objet primitivement désigné, in Mélanges A. Pelzer. Louvain, 1947, pp. 23–59.
10 See J. de Guibert, ‘Pour une étude méthodique des “loca parallela” de S. Thomas’, in Bull. de littér. ecclés., 1914, pp. 472 s. (reprinted in Les doublets de S. Thomas. Paris, 1926, pp. 55 s.); and cf. J. de Ghellinck, ‘Pour l'histoire du mot revelare,’ in Rech. de Sc. relig., 6 (1916), pp. 149–57. Cf. St Thomas, Summa Theol., I, 1, 8, ad 2.
11 See my study ‘Tradition et Sacta Doctrina Chez S. Thomas d'Aquin’, in Festgabe J. R. Geiselmann.
12 Cochleus, for example, who emerges from Father Tavard's book as no mean figure, even if he is largely responsible for the transmission to subsequent times of an entirely polemical impression of Luther (cf. A Herte's study). Or again the Colloquium of Ratisbon, 1541, despite the determined opposition of J. Eck.
13 According to Calvin, Catholics say que l'Eglise ait la puissance de juger tellement de l'Ecriture quelle lui octroic selon son bon plaisir toute ja certitude quelle pcut avoir (Inst. chrét., edition of 1541: Budé, t.I, p. 66); this amounts, Calvin thinks, to ‘vouloir marcher sans la Parole’.
14 See my article ‘Incidence ecclésiologique dun thème de dévotion mariale’, in Mél. de Science relig., 1950, pp. 277–92.
15 The remark (perhaps it is a little too severe) was made in connection with Erasmus. cf. also pp. 38 s., 51). On the other hand the full sacramental notion of the Church is to be found in the catechisms published by C. Moufang: Katholische Katechism‐en des 16. Jahrhunderts, Mayence, 1881.
16 For example, by Driedo (Tavard, p. 139), Alphonsus de Castro (p. 144), Albert Pighi (pp. 148–9), and the Recusants Thomas Harding and Cole (p. 234).
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